Spam

[dakotatech]

Every now and then I hear mention of a solution to the spam problem. I think Yahoo had an article on comparing the header with bla bla bla and so on. Guaranteeing that the mail came from the person who sent it. So why doesn’t someone implement one of these schemes? Is it the major company’s ( Yahoo,AOL, etc) don’t want to consider anothers ideas? Or could it be that someone else is making money on “on going spam solutions”? It’s irritating enough having to cull through the mail trashing the ones with the two word, meaningless subject lines. Yes I do use Spam Assasin. But every now and then a paying customer of mine emails me saying he didn’t receive the info he ordered. I surmise his email trashed my email, thinking it was spam. If you had a in house software issue of this magnitude the higher ups would have flamed the programmers and it would have been fixed in a couple of hours. What is the take from the experts on here?

 

Just venting

[surefire]

1- Teach your clients to whitelist your email address

2- Down the road expect to pay per email sent - in return for guaranteed deliverability

3- Collect your client's fax number, if they have one, and send them a fax of their receipt

4- Offer the option at checkout to have the receipt snail mailed to them. Up to you whether you choose to do this for free of charge a convenience factor for postage. Either way, in the mailing have an upsell offer for something else you sell or a complimentary product someone else sells.

[dakotatech]

1. They are dropped to a post pay page that instructs them to expect an email from us. I have a significant percentage that forgets they have a different email address since they signed up for Paypal. A month later they email that they never received what they ordered.

2. Ick !

3. My clients are your average run of the mill people. They don’t have fax machines.

4. I sell specific information about their model of television. Emailed to them. And a fair number of my sales are for $5. Adding an extra fee for snail mail receipt would just gum up the works. Plus an upsell offer in the same arena would take more creativity than I have.

[Deverill]

Pay per email won't work... just look at the gob of junk mail I just took out of my mail box (USPS)... and they pay. The spammers will be the first to pay for guaranteed delivery. Not to mention the logistic problems that model presents.

[stevevan]

Whenever I get junk mail, I do what Andy Rooney suggested some time ago. Mail the envelope back to the company. They pay the postage anyway!

 

I agree...spam does suck, but I guess it's one of those things that people just learn to live with...like high gas prices!

[surefire]

Pay per email won't work

 

I depends on what you mean by "work". Will it reduce spam, yes, I believe it will.

 

To prove my point by analogy: imagine if tomorrow it was announced that it was now free to send snail mail via USPS, do you think the quantity of 'junk' mail in your physical mailbox would increase.... of course it would. So price of delivery is a factor.

 

If by 'work' you mean 100% elimination of spam, then you are correct, it won't work. Some spammers have business models that would still be profitable if a surcharge were added for each email.

Edited June 8, 2006 by surefire

[Deverill]

I would think that a spammer/advertiser would be willing to pay to guarantee their email will get past the spam filters. Remember, that surcharge guarantees their spam won't end up in a junk mail filter or spambox like Aunt Suzy's email did because she signed it with xxxoooxxx and the filter thought it was a XXX movie ad.

 

It just seems to me that it will have the opposite effect of what they hope for.